A doorman at a Mayfair nightclub was gunned down after refusing entry to a group of revellers, a court has heard.

Bogdan Paduret, known as Tony, was shot twice in the head as he returned home from a shift at the Mayfair Club near Piccadilly in central London on November 27 2010.

Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC told a jury at the Old Bailey: "This was, you may think, a quite appalling crime. One that was as callous as it was apparently casual."

Around three weeks earlier he had refused to allow a group of around 10 people into the club, and a fight broke out.

Mr Aylett said: "Tony Paduret must have had a particularly high profile in that fight. First of all he was the head doorman. Secondly he was also 6ft 5in tall with long blond hair that he wore tied up in a bun. Unwittingly, the easily identifiable Mr Paduret had made himself a target for one or more of these defendants."

He said that one of five men in the dock, Errol Jeffrey, 29, would not forget what had happened.

Mr Aylett told the court: "It may be that it was Jeffrey who was least able to forget or forgive the slight that he and his friends had suffered."

Romanian Mr Paduret was shot outside his house in Temple Fortune, north London, in front of his friend Constantin Cimpan, who had given him a lift home from work. The prosecution said that John Otugade, 19, was the gunman, and that he fled on a motorbike driven by Christopher N'Jie, also 19.

Mr Aylett told the court that Otugade had "almost certainly never met" the victim. He added: "Apart from knowing where Tony Paduret lived, Otugade most likely would not have known the first thing about him. Instead, the prosecution suggest, Otugade was looking to make a name for himself - to acquire a degree of underworld celebrity - by doing someone else's dirty work. The dirty work, the prosecution suggest, of the second defendant, Errol Jeffrey."

It is alleged that Troy Shaw, 20, from Poplar, east London; Jeffrey, from the Isle of Dogs, and Danny Dixon, 29, from Hounslow, west London, acted as "spotters" to keep tabs on where Mr Paduret was. They, along with Otugade, from Hackney, north London, and N'Jie, from the Isle of Dogs, all deny murder.